Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/644

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Journal of American Folklore.

Calander" how the hero is forbidden to enter the closet with a floor of red gold, and in that chamber finds a black horse, which he mounts, and which strikes out an eye. In the "Katha sarit sagara" it is related that the fairy bride of Saktideva prohibits him from ascending to the middle terrace of the palace, in which, however, he finds a horse with a jewelled saddle; trying to mount, he is thrown into a lake, and to his surprise, finds himself in a garden-lake of his own city.

The magic horse and the pool of gold appear in a Greek story mentioned by J. G. v. Hahn (Leipzig, 1864, i. 197), in a form closely analogous to that of the Dakota tale. A prince is carried by a drakos or demonic serpent to the castle of the latter, opens a forbidden chamber, where he finds a horse which advises him, drops his finger in a pool of liquid gold. The drakos immerses him in the pool, he flies on the horse, and is pursued. We then have the usual incidents of the "magic flight," in which the hero is advised by the steed to throw down objects which magically change to interspersed obstacles; these are soap, comb, and mirror, which last becomes a lake.

Instead of the puddle of gold variants introduce a well of magic water, as in Grimm, Kinder und Haus-Marchen, No. 136. In a Norwegian tale, G. W. Dasent, "Popular Tales from the Norse," 1859, p. 358, the finger of the young man is dipped in a copper caldron, in which he is afterwards immersed; we have the usual flight and pursuit, the magic objects being stone, bramblebush, and pitcher, which produces a lake.

The citation of narrations belonging to this class might be indefinitely extended, and it is clear that the Indian story has affiliation with the European.

Thomas Wilson.

Washington, D. C.

Note.—This tale has been ably discussed by E. Cosquin in his "Contes populaires de Lorraine," Paris, 1886, No. 12,1. 133, " Le prince et son cheval." In the story of Lorraine we have, as is common in märchen, a combination of incidents which may have previously existed in separate form. A prince forbidden by his departing father to enter a certain chamber, does so with the result that he finds a fountain of gold in which his finger is dipped, and on a second visit is entirely immersed. Then follows the magic flight (in this case it is not definitely stated that the horse is obtained from the forbidden chamber); thus is concluded the first part of the narration. A sequel continues the adventures of the hero after his deliverance; he arrives in disguise at a foreign court, at a public competition is accepted by a princess as her husband, lives despised with his father-in-law, but on occasion of public danger is able to resume his gilded garments and save the kingdom, preserves his incognito, but is discovered through a wound inflicted by the king himself in order to identify his savior. The two parts which in mutilated form appear also in the Dakota story, make up the tale, and it would seem that it has become diffused throughout the world in this complex shape, while the starting-point and date of the composition, which must have had a single author, are not clear. A class of
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